The October surprises are coming fast and furious – and they’re all bad for Donald Trump

| 9:09 am EDT October 2, 2020
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We’re barely one day into October, and already we’re seeing a series of “October surprises” surface – some of them mere happenstance, some of them by design, and some of them seemingly simply inevitable. Absolutely none of them have been good news for Donald Trump thus far.

Consider the news cycle that Donald Trump has faced on the first day of October: he tested positive for coronavirus after catching it from Hope Hicks. Melania Trump’s embarrassing tapes leaked. Trump henchman Jacob Wohl was criminally charged. Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle got caught up in an ugly sexual harassment scandal.

This comes after several other ugly surprises played out for Trump in the few days leading up to October: his tax returns leaked. His recently demoted campaign manager Brad Parscale had a standoff with a SWAT team. And his debate meltdown appears to have caused his terrible-but-steady poll numbers to finally get worse.

There will be plenty more October surprises in a race this chaotic, and it’ll be tricky to calculate the potential impact of each. Not all of them will go against Donald Trump, but thus far they have – and there is every reason to believe that more Trump scandals will surface as this month plays out.